Japan, Shedding Role of Imitator, Is Emerging as Scientific Pioneer

By WALTER SULLIVAN

Published: September 29, 1987

TOKYO—
STUDYING materials under high pressure, probing the aging process, reaching into space, and in many other ways Japan is transforming itself from a nation of imitators into one of innovators.

Leaders in Japanese science concede that there is some validity to the view that the country has contributed few new ideas in science, seizing instead upon the discoveries of others and exploiting them with unsurpassed industry. New Research Projects

In an effort to change things, Japan has begun a variety of programs, some with no immediate practical goals and others aimed at developing entirely new technologies. Among them are these:

* Using high-pressure presses, Japanese scientists have been able to squeeze relatively large specimens into compact forms, and in the process have created materials never before observed in the laboratory.

* Researchers are delving into the molecular basis of aging in an attempt to find out why certain changes occur as the body grows older and how to gain some control over those changes.

* In the most recent venture in Japan's newly ambitious space program, a satellite launched Feb. 5, paid off this month by observing X-ray emissions from the nearby exploding star that burst into visible light Feb. 24. The X-rays, predicted by theorists, have also been detected from the Mir Soviet space station.

* Inside a deep mine at Kamioka advanced instruments in a gigantic tank of water are detecting neutrinos and other elusive particles raining on the earth from space. It was one of the two installations, worldwide, that recorded a burst of neutrinos from the recent supernova.

* Using the most powerful particle accelerator of its kind physicists in the science city of Tsukuba hope to discover the top quark, the last of the predicted building blocks of matter.

* An ambitious ''frontiers'' research program has been established, drawing many of its participants from scientific establishments outside of Japan.

The Frontiers Research Programs are part of an effort that began two years ago, after Japan's Science and Technology Agency concluded that Japan lagged in innovative research. The research on aging and on materials are both Frontier projects.

Ryogo Kubo, the director-general of the Frontier programs, said the projects are designed to produce ''original research that will serve as the nucleus of the 21st century's science and technology.''

One group of researchers, seeking to learn what brings about molecular changes as the body ages, is considering whether changes in the immune system, perhaps genetic in origin, begin to disrupt the body's normal functions. The team, led by Dr. Gabriel Gachelin, formerly of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, is conducting experiments on mice that develop auto-immune disorders as they grow older. Dr. Kubo hopes to add brain research to the program next year.

Most of the new materials created in the high-pressure research in Japan revert to their original form when the pressure is released, but some retain their new structure, said Dr. Osamu Shimomura of the National Institute for Inorganic Materials in Tsukuba.

The research could lead to the creation of materials with new but as yet unpredictable applications. Another goal is to obtain a better understanding of what happens to materials exposed to the intense pressure deep within the earth that are later exposed on the earth's surface.

In the 1950's, in the race to squeeze graphite into synthetic diamond, such high pressure experiments were vigorously pursued in the United States. But now the Japanese have moved into the lead with their large-volume, high-temperature presses. Higher pressures are achieved elsewhere but the samples are no larger than single crystals.

Dr. Shimomura squeezes his specimens with eight tungsten carbide blocks converging on it from eight directions. Through analysis of the way his sample diffracts X-rays shining through the blocks, he is able to watch the changes occurring as it is compressed.

The X-rays come from the Photon Factory at KEK, the National Laboratory for High Energy Physics at Tsukuba, which is also where high energy electrons and positrons are being smashed against each other in search of the hypothetical building block of matter, the top quark. Its discovery would complete the family of six quarks, five of which have now been observed.

In the Photon Factory, electrons, which are accelerated to 2.5 billion electron volts and magnetically guided around a ring, shed X-rays that can be used for scanning the high-pressure samples. Space Research Program

Japan's space research program is run by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, directed by Dr. Minoru Oda of the University of Tokyo. The program, run separately from the agency that launches Japan's weather, communications and earth-scanning satellites, operates its own launching center at Kagoshima, on Kyushu.

On Feb. 5 that space center launched a 92-foot, solid-fuel rocket carrying the 926-pound Ginga satellite. Aboard were instruments from American, British and Japanese laboratories - including the largest X-ray telescope ever built - to study varying X-ray emissions from such sources as black holes, neutron stars and some galactic nuclei.

Japan sent two missions toward Halley's comet in 1985 and four diverse missions are planned for the next five years. One satellite will be placed in orbit over the poles to study the aurora. Its payload will include a Canadian mass spectrometer to identify what kind of particles are associated with such displays.

Another mission, to be launched in time for the period of maximum solar activity expected in 1991, will carry both Japanese and American X-ray instruments. A spacecraft named Geotail will explore the plasma tail blown from the earth more than a million miles downwind by outrushing gas from the Sun.

The fourth mission, Muses-A, is to be guided so that the gravity of the Moon pitches the spacecraft into a trajectory far out among the planets. A small satellite is to be left in lunar orbit as Muses-A passes by. While Geotail must be launched by an American space shuttle, Japanese rockets will launch the others.

The commission responsible for national space policy has proposed an ambitious 15-year applications program culminating in a re-usable space shuttle that would service a manned ''space factory'' early in the next century. Its role would be to keep Japan in the forefront of new manufacturing methods. A 'Superbugs Project'

Several efforts to stimulate innovation have been undertaken by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry through its program of Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology. Its ''Superbugs Project,'' for example, is conducting a worldwide search for microbes that thrive in environments of very high temperature or salinity. By genetic engineering it is hoped that such tolerance can be transferred to bacteria that can perform industrial roles under such extreme conditions.

The same ministry is promoting the formation of some 20 centers to bring high technology to less developed regions of the country.